Nine lines, almost no punctuation, and a whole argument about regret: the poem fits a lot into a space about the size of a text message. Its subject is our quarrel with time. The speaker opens with a fact nobody disputes, that time moves on and cannot be altered, then spends the rest of the poem fantasising about altering it anyway. The central idea is the gap between that fact and that wish, and, in the final word, a suspicion that the wish may not be worth having.
The opening is built to feel heavy. "Trudging" is not the verb we expect for time, which usually flies, slips or races past. To trudge is to walk wearily, one foot after the other, and the word makes time a plodding, relentless force that cannot be argued with. "Eternally" adds to the weight, its four syllables slowing the line before "forward" lands with a thud. Then comes a small paradox: time is "the one thing that never alters." Everything else shifts, including people, plans and feelings, and the only constant is the passing itself. "Alters" sets up the next line, where "change" appears, so the unchangeable and the wish to change sit side by side and collide.
That third line is the hinge. "How we wish to change it" hovers between exclamation and unfinished thought, and after it the lines shrink to "stop it" and "rewind it." Both are two words, both end on the same "it," and both are lowercase and unpunctuated, like someone muttering demands at something that cannot hear. "Rewind" belongs to tapes and screens, so life briefly becomes a recording that could be played back. Then the metaphor changes mid-stream. With "Erase the pages we have written" the line lengthens, the capital returns, and life turns into a book. The phrasing matters: the speaker does not blame fate, because "we" are the writers of what we now want to rub out. The regret carries responsibility. "Erase" suggests pencil and correctable mistakes, but "have written" is the perfect tense, a job already done.
The small word "it" also shifts meaning. In the middle lines it is time, the thing we cannot control. In "It would be better than this" it is the imagined new story, the thing we think we could control. Same word, opposite relationship.
"Write a new story" is the most confident line, a clean command with nothing to push against. Then the confidence leaks away. "This" is never defined, so each reader fills it with whatever hurts. The line ends on a comma, as if the sentence meant to continue, but the poem drops to a single word on its own line: "Right?" It is a tag question, the kind we ask when we need someone to agree with us. A speaker who was sure would not need to ask. The word also sounds exactly like "Write," two lines above. Whether by design or happy accident, the echo links rewriting with being right, and the question mark asks whether the two are really the same thing.
There is no rhyme and no regular metre. The poem is free verse that follows the pace of a mind: a long, slow statement, a burst of short demands, a longer sentence of fantasy, and then a stumble into doubt. The diction is plain throughout, which keeps the ending from sounding rehearsed. The only figurative leap is the move from machine to book, and it is enough to carry the poem's whole emotional turn.
Nothing here depends on knowing who wrote it. The poem is headed only by three asterisks and signed RoseWater&Ivy, and beyond those two clues the page is all we have, so it has to work alone. It does so by refusing to console. The idea that we could simply start again is familiar and tempting, and the poem lets the speaker voice it at full strength before quietly putting it on trial. The last line leaves us with an uncomfortable thought: a blank page promises a different story, but not necessarily a better one.